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Nivi's journal Entry 3 - addendum
The earring was gone. Guilt and panic made me fumble as I felt my impossibly bare ear. My mom was going to kill me! I had borrowed them without asking, just for the wedding and now I had lost one. Think! James’s car, maybe? The wedding itself? The mission after, in the slums? No please! Not back there again. Binky’s apartment or that seedy bar? Calm down, she couldn’t kill me. She was dead and ashes herself. But no matter how rationally I spoke to the rising terror, it seized me about the throat. Why had I worn them? Stupid elf! Alright, think. I had them at the ceremony. I kept twisting them, the unexpected weight on my ears. When I changed for our efforts to find Binky? I closed my eyes, concentrating. Yes, they had caught on the dress as I was pulling it off. In my haste, I hadn’t wanted to remove them, stupid, idiot elf. I remembered suddenly. The roof, at Binky’s apartment. I had run up, readying my new sniper rifle. I had raised it, aiming at the thugs below, holding it against my shoulder, steadying it. Fired and hit him, and watched him collapse, unconscious. The rifle had smacked my ear and in the noise and confusion… could it have fallen off then? I couldn’t remember it after that, and I was almost sure I had it before, pressing my eye against the window in the apartment lobby, watching the gangers approach. My best hope. But I had to go search for it now, before someone else found it. They were golden coils like looped knots, my mother’s favorites, large enough to be seen by the casual eye. I’d never wear them again, I swore to myself. How to get there fast? My car? A cab, better still, to get me out of there if I needed to leave fast. The gang members we’d taken down would surely have woken up and moved on by now, but... After a quick negotiation, the driver agreed to take me to the slums. My hundred nuyen were a powerful argument and his cab was mine for the night. He still sounded doubtful and I knew that if any serious trouble arrived, I could only count on a long walk home. But my own car would be even worse, like shining a golden spot-light and begging someone to jack it. It took forever to drive to Binky’s apartment. The cab parked in front of the building. No vagrants, I noticed absently. I scurried through the familiar door and up the stairs, ears straining. Check the roof first, I thought. If it isn’t there, then I’d search the apartment. On the top of the building, I hurried to the edge where I had stood to shoot the ganger. Nothing. I squinted and flicked on my flashlight. Still nothing. It wasn’t here. The apartment? I ran to the stairs and back to the apartment. The door was still cracked off its hinges as we had left it. Binky must still be recovering from his difficulties. I knelt by the bookshelf, playing the light over the stained carpet. Nothing. Where was the accursed thing? “Looking for something, slot?” A hard voice in the darkness behind me. My heart stopped and then took off galloping. I twitched my sleeve to loosen the taser dart in it. Only one of them? How had he arrived so quietly? “Turn around slowly, keeb. And turn off that light.” I obeyed, looking around the room casually. Frag it! Three of them. One, sagging on the couch with his arms wrapped around his chest, one standing in front of me with a cheap pistol and the third leaned against the bookshelf, cleaning his nails with a knife. He reached over and flicked on a light. I couldn’t take out three. I’d have to talk my way out of this. I tried a smile at Mr. Pistol. “What you need, gato?” My body language said, no problem here, while my adrenalin raced. Mr. Couch snarled, “Mori, make her give ‘em back!” I was blank. What? Mr. Pistol was wearing a suddenly-familiar leather jacket. Of course, three of the YDU, the Young, Dumb and Uglies from our last run. Mr. Stabby had lifted two of their jackets. And now they wanted them back. Mr. Pistol growled back at the man on the couch, “I’m getting to it. Shut it.” The third man straightened. “You looking for this?” he asked me. He held up my mother’s earring. I couldn’t keep my hands from twitching and his eyes gleamed as he noticed. I wasn’t the only one surprised. Mr. Pistol growled, staring at him, “Where’d you get that?” “Roof,” came the reply. “Look, let me make a call. I can get you the jackets in exchange for the earring. And maybe add in a finder’s fee for the earring?” I was going to make it out of here without a fight. Hope bloomed. Hope died a second later. Mr. Couch growled, “Do I look like I give a shag about some shaggin’ jacket? I want my brother back, now!” I gaped at him. “What brother?” “My brother, keeb! Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.” He hoisted himself to his feet. His arms had hidden a huge bloodstain, revealed when he stood. I recognized this ganger. He was the one Torgo had tried to heal. Which meant the other jacketless one, standing by the bookshelf had to be the one I shot. And I was completely confused. Was the insanity of my team-mates contagious? “Your brother is missing?” I asked cautiously. “Frag it, you bleeding dandelion. You took him!” He was yelling in my face but I could see he could barely stand. His breath was not pleasant. Under the anger, his trembling hands and red-rimmed eyes betrayed a frantic terror. Mr. Pistol took his arm and half-lead, half-carried him back to the couch. “You can hardly stand, man. Let me handle this.” He shot me a fierce glare. “You pervs sure did him ugly.” Ignoring the fact that they attacked us first. Goronit! The third ganger was staring at me in a way which made my skin crawl. “She doesn’t know drek,” he told his companions. “She does,” insisted Mr. Couch, who had turned pale and sweaty. “Make her tell us where those 'leggers took him, Rad.” “Leggers? You mean organleggers?” I had only heard rumors of those vicious enough to kidnap and hack up the living, to harvest organs for the dying. Mr. Couch snorted in disgust. “Nice acting, keeb. You gonna do beetle sometime?” “I mean it, Paint. She don’t know nothing.” The third ganger was still staring at me. Mr. Pistol waved his weapon about in a terrifyingly careless manner. His voice was acidic. “You think, Rad? They knock out the gang, they call their 'legger friends and they leave. A cakewalk. Lots of fresh meat, nice and tender like they want it.” He stalked up to me as he spoke and ended by spitting in my face. Careful elf, I told myself. That pistol may be cheap but cheap-dead is still dead. Mr. Couch groaned at those words. “He’s not dead. Rad said…” he trailed off sagging deeper into the couch. The third ganger said, “I said that I heard them talking. They can’t… can’t harvest them until the neurostun toxin is gone. A few hours, maybe.” His apparent calm vanished and he swallowed hard. For a moment, doubts stirred in my head. I knew I hadn’t called any organleggers. Torgo? The troll had only been in Hong Kong for a month and barely spoke Cantonese. Not a chance. Mr. Stabby? Could that be why he opposed burning down the bar with all the gangers inside? He wanted to keep their meat healthy and raw? I remembered his captivated face, staring at the “magic eye” poster but it wasn’t enough to convince me of his innocence. With an effort, I set the thought aside. I could worry about it if I lived through the night. The three gangers had almost forgotten me. Mr. Pistol was accusing the third ganger, Rad. “You coulda tailed ‘em. Or done something instead of jacking out! Rescued them, instead of bolting like a rabbit.” Rad spat back, “You wanna take on six leggers alone? I’m still alive and you guts know what happened.” The ganger on the couch was as pale as death. His shirt looked bloodier than before. His eyes were closed and he was breathing shallowly. “Shouldn’t we get him to a doctor or something,” I asked. The two others turned to scowl at me. I held up my hands. No problem here, boys. “You think we got fancy docs around here, keeb?” asked Mr. Pistol, furious. “Yeah, I’ll just whistle and get my fairy godmother to take him. Maybe we can call the white hats in to save us too.” No need to be sarcastic, I thought. Shelob, gangers are touchy. Rad yanked a pillow from the couch and used his knife to slit it open. He pressed some of the pillow’s foam to Mr. Couch’s bleeding chest, and bound it on with strips of the pillow’s fabric. “Alright, so where did you see the leggers last? And where could they have gone?” They looked at me blankly. “We know that, we’d be after them, slotty,” Mr. Pistol snarled at me. I sighed. “Think, gato. They need some clean place to… uh… to work.” My eyes shifted to the couch as I spoke but it didn’t look like the ganger sitting there was hearing anything. “Some place sterile and safe, where the uh… the parts can be prepped for transport. What’s around here? A clinic? Hospital? Charity center? Some private hack shop?” They turned back to look at me. I could almost see the wheels turning. Finally Rad said, “There’s a charity clinic about a mile away. A few hack shops over near the bazaar. I think those got raided a few weeks ago. Probably still shut down.” “I’ve got a cab downstairs.” I hoped that was still true. “Let’s take him and see what we can find at that clinic.” “We? Why you helping us, keeb? Want to make sure your partners don’t cut you out?” demanded Mr. Pistol. I looked him in the eye. “I didn’t have anything to do with this. And I’m not a keeb or a dandelion or a slotty. I am definitely not a ‘legger. My name is Nivi and I’m helping you because…” My eyes shifted again to the bleeding man on the couch. I spoke around the sudden lump in my throat, “…because I had family too, once.” I met Mr. Pistol’s eye again, direct and unblinking. He looked away first and muttered, “The kid, Paint’s bro, is kinda our mascot, you know?” Rad stood in front of me, looking me over carefully. “I’m Rad and this is Mori and that’s Paint,” he said, touching the man on the couch. “A pleasure,” I replied automatically. Imagine what my etiquette teacher would say to such social niceties in the dead of night to three gangers, one who was steadily bleeding into the pillow foam bound to his chest. Rad’s lips quirked for an instant. Then he and Mori gently lifted Paint by the arms. The three staggered down the stairs after me. My driver was not pleased at my three new companions. It took several minutes of steady talking and fifty more nuyen before he allowed us to squeeze into the back of the cab. My new companions did not smell any better in such close quarters. Did they sleep in garbage? The driver knew the clinic, and, after glancing at the bleeding Paint, he drove quickly. I muttered to Mori and Rad during the drive, “Let me handle this, if we find them. I want to get out without a fight.” Rad accepted this wordlessly but Mori protested, “You got a brilliant plan, you run it by us first.” I smiled at him, pretending serentity. “No plan,” I muttered back. “Just going to play it by… by ear.” As I expected, he glanced at my pointed ears, then nodded. So many strange beliefs about elves, and for once, that mystique was in my favor. I closed my eyes, thinking hard. We arrived and Rad shifted in his seat. He met my eyes and looked deliberately at a large unmarked truck, then nodded hard. Alright, we had found the place. At my instruction, the cab pulled in across the street. There were two troll guards standing at the rear of the truck, playing cards. Another was snoozing in the driver’s seat, clearly modified for his large frame. I couldn’t see anyone else. “Alright, you two come with me. Bring Paint and don’t talk. Hide your weapons. I’ve got this one.” I hoped. I climbed out of the cab and fluffed my hair. I was tired and a bit grubby from the day but in the dark, it shouldn’t matter. If I couldn’t fool a pair of bored trolls, we were about to be in a lot of trouble. I led the gangers to the troll in the driver’s seat. Knocking on the glass, I waited for him to climb out, rubbing his eyes. He was even bigger than Torgo, with curling horns adding to his height. His huge fists gripped a club almost as long as I was. My icy fingers itched, wanting my taser darts. Easy elf. If it comes to that, we are cracked. I smiled at him coolly, standing tall and confident. “Good evening. My name is Belinda and I represent Dr. Binkirrov. He is conducting a longitudinal study of disease vectors among the lower socio-economic status inhabitants of Hong Kong. Would you count yourself among that number?” The troll looked at me blearily. Mostly, I don’t believe in the stereotypes about trolls, and their stupidity and easy rage. This one wasn’t stupid, but he was massively drunk. The fumes from his breath, even from his great height were making my eyes water. He growled down at me, “Go away.” I stepped back without thinking. For a moment, I wondered why I never listened to my “Uncle” Kwong, who kept telling me to get a comfortable job and forget the revenge business. I smiled up at him again. “Right. Is there someone else we could talk to? Um. It is a serious medical matter. A new virus, very contagious, very deadly. Eats through you like dragonfire.” This seemed to almost reach him. I tried again. “Look, this man here got it yesterday,” I gestured back at Paint, sagging between his fellow gangers, with his blood-soaked shirt. The troll recoiled in horror. “I get the boss,” he muttered, striding away from us. I smiled over my shoulder at the gangers. The troll walked around the front of the truck and opened the clinic door. He yelled into the building and a human male walked out, elderly and impeccably groomed. His clothes screamed “quality” at me and I wanted to despise the lack of subtlety as well as their inappropriateness. Who wears a designer suit for a night in the slums? But it is hard to despise something you want to own for yourself. His jacket alone would feed a normal family for a month. I tore my eyes away and aimed my most professional smile at him. “Ah, good evening. Are you the doctor here?” He smiled back, even more coldly than I did. His eyes swept over me. You know that sense you sometimes get in a bar, when some scumbag looks you over like meat? This was worse. He looked at me like my organs were more valuable than any part of me, like I was hanging in a butcher’s shop, waiting for his knife. I repressed my shudder, barely. His voice was silky, with an accent I could not place. “Only the manager, I’m afraid. Do you need some work?” He looked over the gangers behind me and his face twisted. The troll loomed behind him, like a brick wall. I turned my smile back on him, speaking briskly. “My name is Belinda and I work for Dr. Binkirrov. You’ve heard of him. He’s very interested in new viruses, especially those appearing in low socio-economic regions. We are here because a new disease has appeared, a hypermutated form of HMHVV that eats through flesh. It’s deadly and very contagious. I’ve found a few gangers that have it and I’m wondering if you’ve seen any here.” I gestured behind me. Let this work, I thought hard. He looked again at the gangers behind me. To my amazement, he turned white, even paler than Paint. His voice was a squeaky mimic of the cultivated tones he’d adopted before. “We’ve found some gangers. We do some charity work here and we found some collapsed in a bar. Thought they were victims of a gang war or something, not…” His voice trailed off. “Not something like this.” “You’ve isolated them, I hope?” I replied. This was going to work! “No contact with blood or fluids by you or your staff?” He pulled out a silk handkerchief and held it to his mouth, now looking green. “No, nothing like that. They are…” he gestured at the truck. “We were waiting for the toxin to… I mean, we haven’t had time to unload them yet.” I smiled grimly. He had almost told me that they were waiting for the toxin to wear off before doing anything to them. If I had ever doubted Rad’s story, I couldn’t any more. “I’ll take care of them from here. We have a treatment planned. Probably won’t work but…” I leaned closer. “The disease starts with feeling faint and heart palpitations. Bed rest and staying warm helps a lot at that stage. If they don’t get it, blood from every orifice. Not pretty and extremely painful.” Alright, a bit cruel, but mild revenge for what he had planned for the gangers. That did it. He blurted an order to the troll behind him, to drive the gangers wherever I wanted them and fled back into the clinic. I smiled at the trio of gangers. Even Rad looked impressed. “Get back in the cab. I’ll have the troll drive back to “The Salty Seaman” to drop them off. We’ll meet there.” The rest of the evening was easy. We unloaded the groggy but relieved gangers back at their hideout. Rad impressed me by offering to take the troll out, to get him even drunker, so he wouldn’t remember much of the night. My credits but worth it to hide our trail. How much can a troll drink before he forgets where he spent the night? After he left, Mori introduced me to Paint’s brother, Pete, a skinny, shy kid with a shaved scalp. And, to my shock, he announced to the gang, “We need someone looking out for us. This elf did good by us tonight and we owe her. I vote we let her into the gang.” The protests rang out, mostly to the tune of not wanting a “keeb” or a “slitch” in the gang. I tried not to listen as the talk grew angrier. A loud majority stalked out but some stayed, although none of them looked very happy about it. So now I’m a member of the YDU gang, with no idea what that means. Paint was reviving under his brother’s care. For myself, I felt like I was carrying a troll on my back. I almost crawled back into the cab, tipped the driver again and had him drive me home. All that, and Rad still has my mother’s earring. Mom used to say that politics makes strange bedfellows. She didn’t know the half of it. Back to Layflat Shadowrun